Mercedes Benz infotainment soon will be able to control Bosch Smart Home devices
autoconnectedcar.com
autoconnectedcar.com
Lights that change over the course of the day, or dim for movie time.
I have a smart plug / air quality monitor that, if it were properly configurable / configured, could power a fan to turn on when air needs to be circulated based on a variety of criteria
I have a wireless speaker setup that I also use as my morning alarm, but that allows me to set a reasonable volume on my speakers and have the same sound throughout the house.
My house is equipped with water sensors that will alert if there’s a leak when I’m out of the house, and can call the custodian to deal with it before it gets bad.
Many people have home security systems and Ring cameras.
Smart homes are alive and well to varying degrees of smartness with smart features.
Why do you think they’re a gimmick?
Anyway, most people I’ve seen try to create a smart home end up spending a crazy amount of time managing it, while rarely using the stuff. I see it as adding complexity to my home, rather than making it simpler. Want to watch a movie? Close the blinds. Just set the timer on the washing machine, you don’t need it to be internet connected.
Interoptability is still low between manufacturers, price are to high and life time to sort. I was at a Microsoft presentation where they happily told us that their IOT OS woul get 10 years of security updates, great, but that it the absolute minimum I would expect for something like appliances, and no where near what I would demand for something built into my house.
It’s a gimmick because you need to interested in managing it and keeping it updated, which I am not. There’s enough complexity in our life, let’s not add more.
No. Put a general web browser in the car, make the devices controllable over the web by any general web browser, and you've got something much more useful.
This is Mercedes Benz taking its internal worldview that the car is the center of our lives, making product decisions based on that, and trying to get people to buy into that worldview.
Of course the latest gimmicks are a big part of why you'd buy a S-class, but it's not like the basics like seats and suspension haven't seen significant improvements generation after generation.
A great example would be the rear wheel steering they just introduced, not at all a gimmick.
Manufacturers almost surely tailor some of their product plans with this in mind.
It was absolutely not worth doing, in any conceivable scenario, not at the price Mercedes wanted for it.
But once again, like I said in my first post - this wasn't anywhere near the main reason for changing the car, but I would lie if I said I wasn't looking forward to finally having access to Android Auto.
And.....well, I can present my maths clearer, sure. But I think you're missing the part where I said I had the car since 2016 - so obviously got 4 years of use out of it. Had I sold it day one then sure, I can't beat the depreciation. But assuming a well structured finance agreement you(with some luck) beat the depreciation around year 2-3. By year 4 you should be able to sell the car with some "profit" for yourself unless something bad happened.
I don't know the equivalent financial product in the US, but here in UK I had what's called a PCP - personal contract purchase. It means that the bank loans you money for a car, you buy it, it's in your name(not owned by the bank, it's not a lease), but you pay off what the bank assumes will be the depreciation over 4 years, and then after 4 years you can make the final "lump sum" payment of whatever remains and that's it, or you return the vehicle to the bank and pay nothing more. So it's in some ways similar to lease, but in some ways it's better(the car is always yours from the start so you are always free to sell it at any point without asking your bank for permission).
So in my specific case, I was paying £400 a month for 4 years, then the "lump sum" payment at the end of the PCP was set at £20k. I have reached the end of my agreement, but found a buyer willing to pay me £24k for the car - so I sold it to them, paid off the bank, and was left with a nice £4k in my account(which I then used to purchase another vehicle).
Now, MB UK wanted £3600 for fitting the new head unit(it was a lot of electical stuff in the car that would have to be replaced, tons of labour). Had I paid for it, that alone would have wiped off what I made/saved on selling the car at the end. It would have been(financially) an incredibly bad investment, as like I said, the value of such mod is zero or less.
And(once again, for the 3rd time), this wasn't a reason to swap. I have and am losing money on the next vehicle that is currently standing in my driveway. But certainly a lot less than on fitting a new headunit to my previous Benz.
> And(once again, for the 3rd time), this wasn't a reason to swap.
So why did you bring it up as a reason to swap? Obviously people lease or whatever their cars and get new cars after 3 years and the new cars have new features how does it contradict my point that people do not sell their cars for the gimmicks?
>>Well, one of the(but definitely not the main) reasons
I made a list of reasons - like, I'd like a car that uses less fuel. Car that doesn't wake up the neighberhood when I start it. Car that can actually take some shopping from IKEA. These were the main reasons for a swap. But obviously, there is a secondary list to this - car that doesn't have a shit audio system. Car that has comfortable seats.
Somwhere on that list is a car that has android auto support.
All of this has contributed to me swapping. But logically thinking, there was nothing wrong with the car - I could have just paid it off and kept it. It's very specifically not a lease so I don't have to hand the car back after 4 years, keeping it(either by paying it off or refinancing) is actually an option.
I think what I am saying is that the lack of something like android auto(in a scenario where it cannot be easily retroffited) can and does contribute to a decision to change the entire car - it's not just a stupid tech gimmick that no one cares about as some much earlier comments were trying to suggest.
And just FYI - you don't have to hand over a leased car, at least in the US, you can pay it off and keep it.
Like, think about houses - a small bedroom, noisy neighbour and no fast internet are probably no reasons to move houses on their own - if you told someone you moved houses just because your neighbour was loud people would think you're weird. But when you start listing other reasons in addition to that, people understand. Same for relationships(small reason to leave add up), changing employment or even changing your phone - once the list of reasons for changing is long enough, you make the jump, you can finish justify it to yourself.
And FYI - in UK you can't keep a lease, that's specifically the difference between a lease and a purchase contract. I'm also not a native English speaker so apologies for perhaps not explaining things clearer.
Homeassistant is opensource, controlls a bunch of different gadgets/smartdevices/switches/..., gets data from a bunch of different gadgets/sensors/smart devices, and has a bunch of apps using it's API.
Honestly, I only buy stuff, if I can integrate it into homeassistant (without using the devices cloud services)... sometimes that means soldering + flashing tasmota, but in the end, I get it to work.
When I see new car systems they look like a nightmare to upgrade. Maybe you'll be lucky and someone reverse engineers the interface but maybe not.
Many parts on cars do have standard sizes, but many do not. It would be nice if there was something like the ATX standard for cars. But maybe it would make cars cost twice as much and be less efficient? Who knows.
Second thought: Can a company like Daimler compete successfully in software against the likes of Tesla, Waymo, etc.?
Third thought: I wouldn't want this in my home.
Was this article about self-driving cars? It's just thermostat integration for crying out loud.
What we see there is yet another legacy vs. new tech phenomenon that we see in so many other industries - from telcos to neo-banks.